A Text Mining-based Analysis of Modern Chinese History Narratives in World History Textbooks

This study analyzes the narrative structure of modern Chinese history as presented in high school world history textbooks. By applying text mining techniques, this study aims to identify the narrative frameworks through which modern Chinese history is constructed, and to reveal similarities and differences among the textbooks. The analysis focuses on three textbooks developed under the 2022 revised history curriculum. The research procedure consists of five stages: text extraction, text preprocessing, word frequency analysis, semantic network analysis, and narrative structure interpretation. The results show that, while a standardized narrative structure of modern Chinese history is commonly observed across the textbooks, each text emphasizes particular events and historical agents differently. These differences reflect a complex interplay of factors, including the authority of textbook status, recent academic research, and the perspectives of the authors. This study not only presents a new methodological approach to textbook research, but also provides meaningful insights by examining the narrative structures of textbooks from both theoretical and practical perspectives.